Feeding Season
Sixteen,
driving again
She is already
the kind
who knows
how things will go.
There will be no death,
though she lives
with it. In her
husband’s house,
night is long
and starless —
darkness
means something
different now,
is no longer
the gloss
of the mare
in the field
at noon,
no longer
the crush
of mulberries from her mother’s
tree,
their hands
stained for weeks
no longer
currawongs
calling
in the purple
dusk,
no longer
her bare feet
tracking earth-
furred evening
down the halls.
All winter now
she winnows
to make room
for light —
eating, she has learnt,
is perilous,
and anyway,
she will say,
my hunger
has little
to do with food —
her longing is longest
in Summer,
everything
nothing
but cadence
of memory —
radio-hum of dawn,
buttered toast on blue
willow plates, the venetian-
glade of the kitchen.
Out the window
the lantana like candy
confetti. Days at the pool,
the ribboning sun,
her mother
braiding
her wet hair —
everywhere
the droning
ghosts of days
feel only
like mourning,
kindled
again and again
for him to take
her away.
All the animals
in him. Dancing
you wanted
teeth, embrace,
banquet
of pearls,
mink
and your crimson
ribbon in his fist.
In the torched air
you had not wanted to sleep.
His stones
at your night window,
panther
on the stairs.
You,
so much hunger.
You,
bright
hare, unburied
flare in the dark
blonde grass.
Food
You, who can tell me
the names of illness,
and of each plant
that grows
in your parents’ gully.
You, who can speak
of purple for hours,
who has seen before
the fog-blue eucalypt,
its leaves like the vertebrae
of an ancient beast.
You, who has known
the strange cadence
of hunger, the snare
and florescence
of ghosts who storm
the breast of songs.
You, whose mind
is sometimes bolt
of silk, sometimes
maiden-hair fern,
whose skin collects light
like age. You,
in an emerald
skirt at Christmas,
delivering me sunflowers
with the weight
of newborns,
their gold heads
the size of dinnerplates.